Messed up partitions

[Allen]

I've somehow managed to mess up the partitions on a PC I'm working on and I'm not quite sure how to fix it.

Basically, the drive wouldn't boot so I put it into my PC. In Disk Management I can see all 4 partitions and access all the files on the drive, however, if I run "diskpart" and list the partitions on that disk, it only shows the first 2 out of 4.

I therefore think it's the MBR that has become damaged, but if I try and repair the MBR nothing happens, it still won't allow me to boot.

Any ideas why "diskpart" shows 2 partitions yet Disk Management shows 4? Any ideas how I can fix this please?

(Yes, I have tried googling it for the past few hours and playing with various MBR fixing tools to no avail...)

[Allen]

Ooh, I should add, it's a dynamic disk and I was trying to resize a partition which lead to the fail. Cheers.

[peterb]

Simplest fix (if you can see all the files) is to take a back up of the the important files, then re-initialise the dynamic disks, and restore the files. You may end up having to -re-install the OS.

Otherwise you should back up the important files, and then look for a suitable repair tool, or a disk editor. A Google search will find some more - I mention that one because I have used the trial versions of some of their products. I have used some of the products from www.runtimesoftware.org - although not for that specific purpose.

Messing with partition tables always carries a degree of risk, so you should always back up first. With a disk editor you can also back up the MBR and the partition table as well.

[Allen]

Thanks Peter, it was backed up so nothing has been lost, just a day or two of operations (I hope my manager doesn't get too much flak for it).

Anyway, no-one could get the drive to boot so we're rebuilding it. Pain to do as it's a server, but better than wasting more time figuring out what went wrong.

I think it has something to do with GParted not being able to resize Dynamic partitions, but I'm not sure why the disk stopped working since GParted said it couldn't do, not that it tried and failed (from what I can remember).